For Jay Gruden and the Redskins, difference between first class and the poop deck is razor thin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/for-jay-gruden-and-the-redskins-difference-between-first-class-and-the-poop-deck-is-razor-thin/2015/10/25/0657d066-7b5e-11e5-afce-2afd1d3eb896_story.html

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As defensive end Howard Jones scooped up Kirk Cousins’s fumble and ran 43 yards untouched for a Buccaneers touchdown, the scoreboard in FedEx Field read Tampa Bay 24, Washington 0. It was only the middle of the second quarter. Boos from a crowd of 72,912 thundered down on Cousins, the quarterback’s inept and overwhelmed teammates and Coach Jay Gruden.

One of the worst NFL franchises of this era — the Bucs were 8-29 since the start of 2013 — was not only stomping the home team, but humiliating it in every phase of the game. Booing began in the first quarter. Now it was a wave.

“At that moment, down 24-0, did your entire coaching life pass before your eyes?” Gruden was asked.

“Yes,” Gruden said as he walked into his team’s locker room. Outside, that same scoreboard read: Washington 31, Tampa Bay 30 — the biggest comeback in franchise history.

[Game story: Redskins rally from 24 down to beat Buccaneers]

Then Gruden laughed, with relief and delight, like a man lost overboard in the middle of the ocean, his ship out of sight, who sees a luxury cruise liner approaching behind him. Here, Jay, have an adult beverage with a little pink umbrella in it, come sit on the first-class deck and tell us all about the horror you just escaped.

“That’s not a position you want to be [in] on the sideline. If anyone ever wants to aspire to be a head coach, be down 24-0 around a bunch of pro athletes, it’s not fun,” said Gruden, who was still boiling at halftime, his team down 24-7.

“Jay was livid,” said co-captain Trent Williams. “You don’t see that often. He was on the gas.”

By the final 28 seconds, when Cousins fired a quick six-yard slant to Jordan Reed for the winning touchdown to cap an 11-play, 80-yard drive, the entire team was on the gas. All glowing, proud.

“You like that! You like that?” roared a fired-up Cousins at a camera as he left the field — half comment, half question. Is that good enough for you? Does that look like an NFL quarterback who should have to defend his basic competence every week? How do you like 33 for 40 for 317 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions? How do you like that eight-yard naked bootleg run for a touchdown?

[Brewer: Redskins turn game to forget into a day to remember]

Now, after the boos turned to cheers — “They’ve paid for their tickets, they can do what they want. I heard cheers at the end,” Cousins said — we also need some time for hard realism about this 3-4 season.

In every NFL era, there are a handful of teams so lame that the only light in their football tunnel is when they meet another team just as bad. Some dream of the Super Bowl. But these bottom-dwellers must focus on their humble Toilet Bowls. And when you play in one of them, especially at home, you better win it. That’s an essential part of the process of climbing out from under.

Over the past seven years, the NFL teams with the fewest wins entering Sunday were Jacksonville (30), Cleveland, St. Louis and Tampa Bay (tied at 32), Washington and Oakland (34). Nobody else was under 39 wins. This is a distinctly stinky group. Until this win, three of Washington’s victories since 2013 were over St. Louis, Jacksonville and Oakland. But they also had losses to St. Louis and, last year, to the Bucs, 27-7.

So, they weren’t even consistently escaping from the lower depths in these head-to-head games. That’s why the 24-0 deficit was a potentially defining moment — of the worst kind — for Gruden, Cousins and General Manager Scot McCloughan, who is trying to run a sane, stable ship, supporting both his coach and quarterback.

If 24-0 had turned into a give-up defeat with an invisible “crowd” by the end — a frequent sight in recent years — a lot of solid front office theory could have collided with an owner who has little football judgment and seldom recognizes, or keeps faith, in those who do.

After all, Gruden, off-handedly, referred to this as a “code red” game a week ago. If you get thumped at home two straight years by the bonehead Bucs, who had 16 undisciplined penalties for 142 yards, your job could be code red.

[Steinberg: Redskins aim to make magic during bye week]

Beating the Bucs by a point when you’re a field goal favorite doesn’t prove much of anything. But coming back from 24-0, against anybody in the NFL, does.

“We laid an egg [early]. I like the fact that nobody blinked. They all came together. Nobody stopped believing,” Gruden said. “That’s what team football is all about. It has nothing to do with any ‘code reds’ or talks at halftime.”

But in the final 36 seconds, with a remarkable comeback or a we-can’t-even-beat-the-Bucs defeat in the balance, a lot of football luck came into play.

With first and goal at the 6, Cousins overthrew an open Reed on a basic fade to the back of the end zone. “It was there. He was a little pumped up,” said Gruden. Cousins’s next pass was into traffic — a mistake, he later admitted — and deflected off a Bucs safety’s hand. Another possible defeat-sealing Cousins interception?

“Hah, he threw it about 108 mph. No one could have caught it,” said Gruden, chuckling. He can laugh now, because the next play worked.

With four receivers lined up to the left in a bunch formation, only Reed was split out alone to the right. In Atlanta on the goal line, that formation, that play, blew up and left Gruden second-guessing himself two days later.

“Yeah, we were going to throw that wonderful bubble-screen to [Jamison] Crowder if we got the look,” said Gruden. “That would really tick a lot of people off. We had man-to-man instead with Reed on the safety. That’s the side we decided to work.”

Perfectly.

“It’s not like we have any sure wins on our schedule,” said Gruden. “It ain’t easy.”

In fact, one play probably decided this game. Cornerback Bashaud Breeland ran down Doug Martin (136 yards rushing) from behind at the Washington 5 after a 49-yard run. The defense held and the Bucs settled for a field goal with 2:24 left.

“If Breeland takes that one play off, we’re down by 10 [points] and the game’s over, most likely,” Gruden said.

That’s how narrow the difference is between the biggest comeback win in team history in a season of gradual rebuilding that still seems on be on track.

And the sound of flushing.